Job Discussion Forums

[stevesayskanpai1]

Hi all,

I've been going round and round in circles looking for post-JET employment in the Tokyo area. Despite having 2 years experience in Japan, reasonably good Japanese and a good degree it feels almost as though I'm gonna have to start all over again, relocating from western Japan to the big city.

Theres a lot of posts on getting jobs if ur just arriving in Japan, but what would people recommend for my position? I can see two likely scenarios at the moment

a- getting some journalism work I've already applied for, meaning I'd want part time English teaching work (GABA, or something private)

b- full-time English teaching work, preferably in a school environment but not ruling out eikaiwa work as long as the pay and conditions seem good.

Whats the best I can hope for, and does anyone have any tips? Recommended companies etc? The trouble with finding private schools seems to be that there are lots of dispatch agencies working on behalf of them, which seem to have quite a bad reputation...what is the alternative?

Thanks for any help you can provide

[Glenski]

Hi Steve,
I think I recognize you from another forum. If so, you should really explain that 2 years on JET means you have not yet finished your second year, and that you have the JET instructor visa.

My advice on that other forum still holds, but since you are interested in Tokyo specifically, here's more. You realize that Tokyo is the biggest city in Japan, so the opportunities are more numerous there than anywhere else, but also that competition is probably higher. Since you can't relocate there until you finish JET, you'll have to deal with job hunting by long distance from western Japan, and hope you can get an interview suitable with your schedule.

When you wrote

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

Dispatch companies are the usual way that most private high schools seem to recruit IME. Some schools have a different agency for each ALT/ Native teacher.

There are good agencies and bad ones. You need to investigate and decide for yourself which kind it is in your interview. But often, the problem (when the problem is things like amount of pay) isn't the dispatch company, it's the school itself. Schools like dispatch companies because they are a buffer between the school and the employee, and so they don't have to have confrontations with the native English teacher if they want you to do things that are outside of the contract, or offer pay that is far below industry standard (but remember, that the pay is after the dispatch company takes their cut, so maybe the school is offering standard pay, and the company is taking a big chunk) and can threaten to cancel the contract with the dispatch company if the dispatch company balks at telling the English teacher.

It sounds like the OP has no TESL / TESOL certificate. That alone could rule out a lot of (probably better) dispatch companies. Dispatch companies market to schools by saying things like they offer trained, usually experienced, native English teachers for less than a direct hire and make everything easy for the school.

Finally, "a good degree" may not make a lot of sense to employers. They may not have heard of your school. They may not know what you studied. It sounds like 'a good degree' means 'an unrelated degree from a school famous in your home area'. Unrelated is unrelated.

And yes, you will be starting again. JET is sometimes a negative for jobs in private highs or with better dispatch companies because JETs have a reputation for not really contributing much in the school, and being used to doing a whole lot of internet surfing during school hours, and that makes it difficult for Japanese teachers to talk to the JET because they are hesitant to approach him/ her. I know this because I was in JET. When I interview, that experience (four years) is glossed over and they ask about my experience in Canada. My training and experience in Canada (but mostly it was probably my contacts within the company through their teachers prior to interviewing) is what got me into private highs. So maybe if you know someone who works for a dispatch in your area (Western Japan?) you can interview with the company there and they may have a school in Kanto. But you need to be aware that like the rest of Japan, the greatest number of jobs (far more than half of them) start and end in April, so the number of available positions in summer will be much less. Maybe you may find yourself stringing together language school or part time juku jobs until next year.

[ripslyme]

[Glenski]

Here is a sample rirekisho.
http://jobsearch.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=jobsearch&cdn=careers&tm=12&f=00&tt=14&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//dolphin.upenn.edu/%7Ejapan/job.html

Here is the template.
http://jobsearch.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=jobsearch&cdn=careers&tm=12&f=00&tt=14&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//dolphin.upenn.edu/%7Ejapan/job.html

Here is a template that opens in Word. (Follow the link.)
http://www.y-link.net/index.php?id=37&lang=2